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This is a question relating back a couple of weeks to the "future of the recording business" thread.

OK, here goes...

My wife and I run a recording studio. We're both musicians... OK, the Mrs is the musician and I'm a drummer... real funny. But as we all already know, all too often management and the label make all the money, leaving the musicians to get left twisting in the wind.

Seriously though, what I'm thinking about is a pseudo "co-operative" studio system and how it should work for "member" musicians and vendors in terms of fees and percentages.

While there is no such thing as a standard contract... is it possible to get a concensus on a breakdown of what reasonable fees and percentages would be?

Here's my INITIAL thoughts;
Songwriter - 20 Percent
Lyricist - 20 Percent
Performance - 15 percent
Studio - 15 Percent
Label ("co-op") - 30 Percent

These percentages would apply to a 100% speculative deal?

While that makes for kinda' slI'm margins for the "label", the label would be comprised of fellow musicians who are "working" for/under the same "contract"... Therefore, the label only need cover it's expendatures for duplication, advertising and marketing.

Your thoughts?

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Comments

maintiger Sat, 04/24/2004 - 12:58

I wanted to do something sort of like that when I used to have my studio. While it sounded good on paper, I could never get the musicians in the "coap" going. i was paying the bills and spending a lotta time and energy on this while it seemed everybody else was"coasting" and it ended up where I never got paid for anything that was done- let alone all the time and energy spent on trying to set it up. Not trying to discourage you, just telling you what happened to my coap project. Hope you can do better.

I since sold the studio and I'm just working on my own and a few other selected projects in my home studio and I have no intentions on ever doing the co-op thing again. If I did, I would charge A monthly fee to have access to the studio and set up a schedule- hey, someone has to pay the bill and not be left holding the bag!~

MadMax Sat, 04/24/2004 - 13:53

maintiger wrote: ... in my home studio and I have no intentions on ever doing the co-op thing again. If I did, I would charge A monthly fee to have access to the studio and set up a schedule- hey, someone has to pay the bill and not be left holding the bag!~

Exactly... that and there would have to be some sort of "sweat equity" arrangement where all members would either have to put in time, or pay some additional "fee" to pay for someone outside the co-op to do their share of the work.

Are the percentages I've outline fair?

Max